Things to know about Ashley Madison breach: Who's affected?
LONDON (AP) — The spectacular breach at adultery site Ashley Madison gave rise to sordid tales of horrified spouses rushing to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases, frantic phone calls to lawyers and torrid confrontations with spouses.
Ashley Madison claims to have had about 39 million members, but security experts who examined the internal records put the number of email addresses at 36 million.
Several governments have announced investigations following revelations that bureaucrats signed up to the adultery website using their work emails.
Chicago-based Charles Black, who along with partner Jacob Gilman briefly ran a website allowing people to check emails and telephone numbers against the database, said he recorded 500,000 unique visitors in just 48 hours.
Lawyer Susan Moss predicted a "tsunami" of new cases, but family law experts are divided whether the hack will lead to significant increase in the divorce rate.
Kristen V. Brown, a tech reporter at Fusion who has had telephone interviews with two dozen Ashley Madison users, said many of those she spoke to were trying to lie low.
The hackers who struck Ashley Madison have accused the site of filling it with fake profiles and extorting fees for wiping profiles that were never truly deleted.
[...] the site has said little beyond a statement released Tuesday in which it slammed the break-in as "an act of criminality."